Blogger's Corner - Fracking News

EPA Finds No Widespread Water Pollution From Fracking

By
Steve Everley
15 December, 2016

Americans could be forgiven for thinking fracking poses an inherent threat to groundwater.

The anti-fossil fuel “Keep It in the Ground” movement has waged a multimillion-dollar campaign to convince the public of that exact claim, even though there has never been any evidence to support the accusation.

Indeed, anti-fracking activists were peddling “fake news” long before the media professed any concern about it.

But a landmark report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, released earlier this month, finally puts that talking point to bed. After more than half a decade of study, the EPA concluded that “the number of identified cases of drinking water contamination is small” compared to the total number of hydraulically fractured wells.

Put differently, activist claims about “inherent risks” to groundwater are simply not true.

Of course, the EPA did its best to soften the blow to the “Keep It in the Ground” crowd. The agency stressed that oil and gas development as a whole “can” have impacts “under some circumstances,” a fact that was already known before the EPA began spending nearly $30 million in taxpayer money to assess the risk.

The EPA also claimed “data gaps and uncertainties” prevented it from making broad-scale conclusions, which is odd considering how Congress appropriated the EPA the money in order to derive a conclusion about the overall risk.

In the agency’s draft report, released in the summer of 2015, the EPA explicitly said it “did not find evidence that these mechanisms [fracking] have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources.” The data did not change, but the EPA removed that line from the final report.

Peer-reviewed studies have consistently found little if anything to substantiate the idea that fracking can contaminate groundwater.

At a certain point, you have to accept that the lack of evidence actually means something, especially considering the extensive studies that have taken place.

But if you’re waiting for environmental groups to acknowledge the scientific realities of fracking, don’t hold your breath.

The Sierra Club still claims on its website that “fracking has contaminated the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of Americans.” Food & Water Watch responded to the EPA’s report by claiming it shows “the inherent harms and hazards of fracking.”

It’s odd how members of “Keep It in the Ground” love to call their opponents science deniers, considering they are willfully denying what the scientific community has said and continues to say about fracking.

Anti-fracking groups have done a masterful job of scaring the public about oil and gas development. Thankfully, we now have proof that their central claim is without merit.

U.S. drillers have the ability to double the country's oil production to 20 million barrels a day, but doing so too soon would tank oil prices, Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm said Thursday.

Hamm, who made his fortune by pioneering new drilling methods in North Dakota's Bakken Formation, did not offer a timeline for when this would be possible, but it would certainly be a difficult task. Surging U.S. production since 2008 was largely responsible for creating a global oversupply of oil that sent prices spiraling from more than $100 a barrel to $26 this past winter.

Hillary Clinton’s promise during a debate Sunday to aggressively regulate fracking deepens the divide between Republican and Democratic presidential candidates on oil and gas development and signifies her continued shift to the left on environmental issues.

In the Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan against Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton said she wouldn’t support fracking in states or local communities that don’t want it, if it causes pollution, or if the chemicals used aren’t disclosed.

"By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place," Clinton said.

A new study by Oren Cass, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, finds despite massive subsidies and state mandates, renewable energy sources remain a small part of America’s energy supply. Investment in the industry has been flat for almost five years domestically and globally. Even as GDP grew 7.3 percent since 2007, Cass notes, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fell 9.7 percent from their 2007 peak of 6,001 megatons of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) to 5,417 MtCO2 in 2015.